Bad winds are blowing on Algeria’s Saharan borders at a time when its relations with Morocco, the Sahel and Libya are more troubled than ever. Abdelmadjid Tebboune, the outgoing Algerian president, 78, whose announcement of re-election, with 94,65 % of votes, fell on Sunday, September 8, will he be able to restore his country’s strategic position, which has been seriously degraded in recent years? The geopolitical challenge posed by the arc of crises unfolding on national borders will undoubtedly be one of the biggest issues of his second term.
If the threat is often dramatized in the Algerian press in the form of a conspiracy – “ A plan is taking shape aiming at surround Algeria with conflicts in neighboring countries (…), with the obvious aim of destabilization “, writes the daily newspaper The Evening of Algeria in a column published on September 2, entitled “The Machination” – it is a fact that the country’s regional environment has become volatile. And that Algiers is struggling to regain control as if its diplomatic software were obsolete.
Denunciation of the Algiers Agreement
As the dispute with Morocco over Western Sahara continues to worsen, to the point of fueling a worrying arms race, a new hotbed of crisis has ignited in 2024 with Mali. On January 25, Bamako denounced the “Algiers Agreement” on the stabilization of northern Mali signed in 2015 with rebel groups under the auspices of Algeria.
The gesture of rupture only served to confirm a new situation on the ground where the Malian junta resulting from the two putschs of 2020 and 2021 has resumed the offensive against the rebel groups in the north – Tuareg and Arab – with the support of Wagner’s Russian paramilitaries.
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The Bamako authorities then castigated the“interference” of Algeria protecting its Tuareg and Arab allies, now “terrorists” in their eyes, while the Algerian press brandished the specter of a new “Chaos in Mali”. In fact, the clashes resumed in northern Mali, reaching a peak during the summer: a severe defeat suffered by Bamako’s forces and Wagner’s soldiers (July 25-27) in the Tin Zaouatine region, on the Algerian border, was followed a month later by bombings by Malian drones, the famous Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2, in this same border area with Algeria at the cost of numerous civilian casualties.
“Securing the borders”
“In two days, 5,000 people flocked to Algeria”says Abdelaziz Rahabi, former Algerian minister and ambassador. Faced with the gravity of the events, Algeria’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Amar Bendjama, immediately denounced in Washington “violations of private armies used by certain countries” – allusion to Wagner in the service of Bamako – going so far as to demand « sanctions ». His Malian counterpart accused him in return of making himself “the relay of terrorist propaganda in [la] region “.
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